Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

Beaches

Edisto Beach & Lake Greenwood, South Carolina: Shelling, Dark Skies and a 4,000-Year-Old Shell Mound

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Last Updated: August 3, 2026

Edisto Beach sits about an hour south of Charleston at the end of Highway 174, a two-lane road that simply runs out of island and stops at the Atlantic. That dead end is the whole reason the place is still quiet. Fewer than a thousand people live in the town year-round, there is no high-rise and no boardwalk, and the main attraction is a beach so thick with shells you can hear them clatter in the wash. Low tourism, low industry, and miles of sand to walk was exactly what we were after. From Hanna Park in Jacksonville it was a four-hour drive north.

Sandy Huntley walking looking at sea shells on Edisto Beach, South Carolina
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Hanna Park, Jacksonville, Florida: Oceanfront Camping, Boneyard Beach & the Historian Behind the Name

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Last Updated: August 2, 2026

Hanna Park is about 450 acres of mature coastal hammock at Mayport, in the Jacksonville Beaches area of northeast Florida. Its full name is Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, and the name is worth pausing on rather than skimming past — more on her in a moment. Winthrop Bancroft donated the first five oceanfront acres to the City of Jacksonville in 1967 on the condition that the park carry her name; the city bought up adjoining land and the park opened in 1972.

Wide Atlantic beach and surf at Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, Jacksonville, Florida
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Nation’s Oldest City: St. Augustine, Florida — Spanish Roots, Pirate Treasure & the Dade Pyramids

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Last Updated: August 2, 2026

St. Augustine is called the Nation’s Oldest City, and the claim holds up with one careful qualification. Founded in 1565 by the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the mainland United States. San Juan, Puerto Rico is older still, founded in 1521. Either way, St. Augustine was already two generations old when the English landed at Jamestown. Spain ceded Florida to the United States under the Adams-Onís Treaty, signed in 1819 and taking effect in 1821; St. Augustine served as capital of the Florida Territory until 1824, when the seat of government moved to Tallahassee — chosen, sensibly enough, as the midpoint between here and Pensacola.

Sandy Huntley walking Jake the dog along the sand at St. Augustine Beach, Florida
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Ormond Beach, Florida in January: Oceanfront Camping, Shorebirds & the Scenic Loop

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Ormond Beach sits on Florida’s Atlantic coast just north of Daytona Beach. We have stayed a little further north at Flagler Beach before and liked the stretch, so we came back to it. This time the weather had other ideas. A bitter, windy, wet storm sat on us for most of the week and we got perhaps two days of sunshine out of seven. We lost the daily beach walks we had been looking forward to — but we were given something else instead: a dramatic, grey, heaving Atlantic in full winter temper, twenty feet from where we were sitting. We never did get a photograph that did it justice. The day below was the nicest one we had.

Atlantic Ocean and open sky on the one clear day of a stormy January week at Ormond Beach, Florida
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Panama City Beach, Florida: Sugar-White Sand, Historic St. Andrews & a Winter Stay at Emerald Coast RV

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Panama City Beach is a spring break and vacation town for much of the southern United States, and its miles of sugar-white sand are consistently rated among the best beaches in America. The area went through a real estate boom in the mid-2000s with a wave of new construction and rising prices. Then, on October 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael came ashore near Tyndall Air Force Base with 161 mph sustained winds — a Category 5 and the most powerful storm ever recorded to strike the Florida Panhandle. Driving through three years later, it was surprisingly hard to tell. Most structures had been rebuilt or repaired. What gives it away is the tree line: the downed and topped pines and oaks are still everywhere once you know to look. From Orange Beach, Alabama it was about a three-hour tow with the Airstream.

Empty stretch of sugar-white sand beach with no one in sight on a January morning at Panama City Beach, Florida
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Fort Pickens, Florida & Orange Beach, Alabama: Camping on Santa Rosa Island, Civil War Brickwork & Gulf State Park

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Last Updated: August 1, 2026

Fort Pickens sits at the western tip of Santa Rosa Island inside the Gulf Islands National Seashore of Florida. Sandy and I have camped here before, and we keep coming back for the same reason: miles of white sand without the beach crowds or the wall of high-rise condos that swallow so much of the Florida coastline. This was our favorite kind of travel day — about an hour and a half of sunny, scenic coastal driving from Santa Rosa Beach and Topsail Hill Preserve to the Fort Pickens Campground, with our brand-new 27-foot Airstream behind the truck and Jake stretched out in the back seat.

Large coastal defense cannon aimed toward the Gulf of Mexico from the ramparts of Fort Pickens, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Pensacola Beach, Florida, photographed by travel blogger Michael Huntley
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